RE: delegation definition

-0.5

I prefer Tim's proposal, but it still seems too domain-specific to me, talking about "authority" relationships. I also don't understand what "(by itself or by another agent)" is trying to convey. Finally, using "represents" to refer to relations between agents is confusing when used in a data model definition.

While Responsibilty was a confusing term for acting on behalf of, I thought the concepts did still concern responsibility not necessarily a social relationship like authority. That is, I understood "X wasAssociatedWith A. X actedOnBehalfOf Y." to mean that both X and Y have some responsibility for A being enacted (in the way it was), and that X's actions carry out Y's responsibility as well as it's own.

Here's my counter-proposal:

Delegation is the transfer of responsibility to an agent to carry out a specific activity as a delegate or representative, while the agent it acts on behalf of retains some responsibility for the outcome of the delegated work.
thanks,
Simon

Dr Simon Miles
Senior Lecturer, Department of Informatics
Kings College London, WC2R 2LS, UK
+44 (0)20 7848 1166

Determining the trustworthiness of new electronic contracts:
http://eprints.dcs.kcl.ac.uk/1341/

________________________________
From: Timothy Lebo [lebot@rpi.edu]
Sent: 25 May 2012 12:12
To: Daniel Garijo
Cc: Tom De Nies; Provenance Working Group
Subject: Re: delegation definition

Perhaps we should weaken the responsibility of the "delegating agent"?


/Delegation is the assignment of authority to an agent (by itself or by
another agent) to carry out a specific activity as a delegate or
representative, while the agent that it represents remains responsible
for the outcome of the delegated work.

I'd like to propose replacing  "remains responsible" to "retains some responsibility", in line with the "weak" or "arbitrary" responsibility that Agents have in Association and Attribution.


/Delegation is the assignment of authority to an agent (by itself or by
another agent) to carry out a specific activity as a delegate or
representative, while the agent that it represents retains some responsibility
for the outcome of the delegated work.

Thanks!
Tim


On May 25, 2012, at 4:28 AM, Daniel Garijo wrote:

+1

2012/5/25 Tom De Nies <tom.denies@ugent.be<mailto:tom.denies@ugent.be>>
This definition is phrased very clear and complete I think, so +1 as well :)

Tom
(sorry for the double mail Paul, accidentally sent the response to you instead of the mailing list)



2012/5/25 Tom De Nies <tom.denies@ugent.be<mailto:tom.denies@ugent.be>>
This definition is phrased very clear and complete I think, so +1 as well :)


2012/5/25 Paul Groth <p.t.groth@vu.nl<mailto:p.t.groth@vu.nl>>
another +1

On Fri, May 25, 2012 at 2:26 AM, Eric <ericphb@gmail.com<mailto:ericphb@gmail.com>> wrote:
> +1
>
> Sent from my Samsung smartphone on AT&T
>
> Luc Moreau <L.Moreau@ecs.soton.ac.uk<mailto:L.Moreau@ecs.soton.ac.uk>> wrote:
>
>>
>>All,
>>Today, we decided to replace the term Responsibility by Delegation.
>>Inspired by suggestions from Tim and Stephan, I drafted a definition:
>>
>>/Delegation is the assignment of authority to an agent (by itself or by
>>another agent) to carry out a specific activity as a delegate or
>>representative, while the agent that it represents remains responsible
>>for the outcome of the delegated work.
>>/
>>Thoughts?
>>
>>Cheers,
>>Luc
>>



--
--
Dr. Paul Groth (p.t.groth@vu.nl<mailto:p.t.groth@vu.nl>)
http://www.few.vu.nl/~pgroth/<http://www.few.vu.nl/%7Epgroth/>
Assistant Professor
Knowledge Representation & Reasoning Group
Artificial Intelligence Section
Department of Computer Science
VU University Amsterdam